May I Try Another Recipe Please?

Posted by Cynical Sarah on May 31, 2010

It’s the last day of May and I haven’t even told y’all about my culinary adventure from the latest issue of Cooking Light yet. In honor of the great weather we’ve been having and the possibility of barbecues in the near future, I tried a healthy potato salad recipe this month.

In my mind, potato salad is supposed to be a mayo and mustard concoction that’s served cold and can’t be left out too long or it will go bad. It sure does taste good, but perhaps a potato salad with less calories and less chance of food poisoning would be a nice change.

So my June 2010 issue of Cooking Light had all sorts of summer food options. (I’m  not sure what happened to the May 2010 issue. They seemed to have skipped one.) There were tips for cooking beef, articles on grilling, pan roasts and more, but I settled on reading the “4 Steps to Perfect Potato Salad” and then trying out the Farmers’ Market Potato Salad.

First of all, I read up on how to properly boil potatoes so that they don’t turn into a pile of mush in the salad, and then chose a recipe that uses roasted potatoes instead. Another good tip though was that you should add your dressing while your potatoes are still warm so they absorb maximum flavor.

That was easy enough to follow since the potato salad I chose to try was also served warm anyway. Really, it seems I chose a recipe that was the exact opposite of what my brain thinks a potato salad should be. It’s warm, and it has no mayo.

It also had things like corn, tomato and zucchini to make it even more foreign from a “real” potato salad. But it did have mustard. The dressing was made from olive oil, vinegar, tarragon (though I subbed in fennel seed instead), whole grain dijon mustard, tabasco sauce, salt and pepper.

So I roasted some potatoes and corn and drizzled the dressing on while it was warm like the tip page said. Once it was mixed up, the only sign there even was dressing was a few chunks of dijon here and there. My initial impression was that it was going to be a very disappointing salad compared to what my brain wanted it to be.

Then I added i the sauteed zucchini and onions, and tossed in the cut up cherry tomatoes. It pretty much looked like a plain bowl of roasted and sauteed veggies. But I guess that’s what you would expect if you’re not adding mayo to it.

So it all comes down to taste then. Will this potato salad taste good? Will it work just as well to serve at a picnic? Will Troy approve?

The answer was yes, yes and yes.

This was fairly simple to make, and the result was a lot tastier than you would expect without thick layers of dressing holding it all together. The vinegar and the Dijon mustard give it a good zing.

We ate it warm the first night right after making it. The recipe says you can make ahead of time and serve cold, but when I tried it cold the next day, I didn’t like it quite as much. I think the roasted potatoes and the sauteed veggies are better warm.

That’s the only recipe I got around to trying this month. At least it was a success. I’ll probably try out a couple more from it in June since I’m guessing I won’t be getting another issue until July anyway. There’s a Walnut and Rosemary Oven-Fried Chicken recipe that looks pretty delicious, and the Cracked Wheat Salad with Nectarines, Parsley and Pistachios looks interesting. I’ll let you know how it goes!

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Tags: cooking light, diet, food, healthy eating, potato salad, recipe

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